Soon after 1800, certain changes began in ways of travel that have made life different from that of our forefathers. We have seen in previous chapters that travel in old times was very slow. People jogged along day after day and week after week to make a journey of hundreds of miles on horseback, or they were jolted over bad roads in stage-wagons or carriages. Pack-horses or heavy wagons carried all the freight that went by land. Boats, rowed or pushed with poles, went slowly up and down the rivers, carrying passengers and freight. Periaugers, with oars and sails, and other small vessels, plied up and down the coast, and all the ships at sea were propelled by sails.

In ships our people made great improvements. The "Baltimore cupper, a schooner with raking masts — that is, masts that slanted backward—was famous for its speed. Our frigates gained advantages in the War of 1812 by being better sailors than the English people-of-war. At a later period the American "clipper-built ships" were the swiftest sailing-vessels in the world. This superiority in building and sailing swift ships has remained with America to the present time, as recent yacht races have shown.

After the invention of the steam-engine in England, attempts were made in France, Scotland, and America to build boats that would go by steam. But Robert Fulton, an American, built the first really successful steamboat. She was launched in 1807, and ran between New York and Albany, to the great wonder of all who saw her. Steamboats soon after took the place of keelboats on the Western rivers, and they greatly aided in the rapid development of the new country.

Steamboats served for commerce and travel where there were rivers and lakes. But how should the traffic on the Western rivers and the Great Lakes be connected with the rivers east of the Alleghany Mountains and the sea? Canals, long used in Europe, were thought of for this purpose, and Washington was much interested in a proposed canal from the Potomac to the Ohio River. But the first great canal in this country was that from the Hudson River to Lake Erie. The chief promoter of this work was De Witt Clinton, governor of New York. It was eight years in construction. It was begun on the 4th of July, 1817, and in 1825 its completion was celebrated by a procession of boats from Albany to the ocean, where Governor De Witt Clinton poured a keg of Lake Erie water into the sea, as a sign of their union. This canal, by opening a trade with the West, made New York the greatest city of the United States.

But, for the more mountainous country of the Middle States, a great "National Road" for wagons was planned and built from western Maryland as far as the western part of Indiana. The extension of railroads soon rendered it of no importance as a national work.

But the greatest change of all, in the life of Americans, was made by the railway, which was introduced from England. The first railroads were merely tracks of iron bars, on which little cars, loaded with coal, were drawn from the mines. The first railway in the United States was but two miles long, and was used only for hauling stone. The cars were drawn by horses. The first passenger-train in America was run on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1830, but the cars were drawn by horses the first year. The extension of railways was very rapid; they changed America more than any other country, because here the distances are so great. We have almost as many miles of railway as all the world besides.

The first passenger-cars were merely stage-coaches on the rails, and in other countries they still keep something of this form. In America large, airy cars for passengers were early introduced, and the parlor-car, the sleeping car, the hotel car, and the dining car are all of American origin, and are little used elsewhere. The street tramway, or horse-railroad, and the elevated railways for rapid travel in cities, were first used in this country.

The electric telegraph, in its present practical shape, was the invention of an American artist, S. F. B. Morse. In old times people sent messages by objects shown on high ground, by lights displayed at night, or by bonfires kindled on the hills. Even the wild American Indians sent intelligence across the plains by waving a blanket over a fire and thus making a "smoke-signal." In 1835 Morse set up and worked a telegraphic wire. But it was nine years later before he could persuade Congress to appropriate money to set up the first line. In 1844 the first message was sent from Washington to Baltimore.

The introduction of the railway and the invention of the telegraph completely changed the conditions of life in the 1800s. In prior times, it was weeks after a presidential election before the result could be generally known. So wide is our country today that, if intelligence had to be carried, as formerly, by stage-coaches and post-boys on horseback, it would take months for an important event to be known in remote regions of the country. Today, given phones and the Internet, every important bit of news is known from end to end of the country in only seconds. Railroads, cars, and airplanes too, have made distant places seem near together, and distributed comforts to the most remote parts of the country.